Vices
by scullyseviltwin
Summary: He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long. Martin Luther, 1777


Kirsten, for the beta and the honest opinion on something I wasn't sure I wanted an honest opinion ON, and to Anni.

"He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long." Martin Luther, 1777

/1/

An equivalent to a cold drag off of the first cigarette, on the back porch of a house in Green Bay, cold and crisp and so sating after years of nicotine celibacy: a rush right to his head, dizzying him; smoke to his heart, speeding it up. Bad for his health, so hard to quit. Lingering about him as she would, a tinge of her scent on his jacket when he shucked it in the morning. She was the thing he craved when he woke, mouth starchy, his head throbbing from withdrawal.

But he had a picture of her, the equivalent of a quitting aid. The Sara patch, something he could pull out and hold onto when he'd find a quiet recess–a moment of restlessness. It would lay in his hand as he closed his eyes and pretend that one day, he'd really have her. Or maybe he'd light up one day and not need the idea of her, maybe one day she'd just be there, waiting, on fire for him.

But it was always there, a frivolous thought of abstinence from her. One more touch, just one more touch and he would be fine. Just one more moment of silence between them. Just one more indulgence in the quiet spaces, being able to watch her fingers catalogue evidence.

Just. One. More.

Addiction, a monkey on his back; he was craving her every day, every night, in the empty spaces. The picture became tattered and worn and he could no longer distinguish her face, just the Boston skyline in the distance and the hideous green sweater she had worn on the day he'd left her for the first time.

He burned her down to the end and watched as he snubbed her out.

/2/

Sweeping aside the hair at the base of her neck had been the single most erotic sensation in his life to that moment.

Beneath his fingers was a trickle of blood and a pinprick hole from where she'd landed on a nail. A flash before his eyes: a suspect pushing her back, pushing her down and her cry of pain. Such a miniscule expulsion of air for his ears to bask over, but spurring him to immediate action none the less.

Paramedics for Greg and his slight concussion and a patch of gauze and pad of alcohol for her. Grissom had taken the disinfectant in hand and pressed it to her skin. A hiss escaped slick and sinewy from her lips; a little sob. "You okay?" he'd asked back but had received no answer in return.

Her head had fallen, chin touching chest as he moved the pad over the wound, listening to her cry in pain.

Pleasure and pain went hand in hand, sometimes. But as he pressed into her body for the first time, which would it be and would she sound the same; so resigned to the end that there was no denying the eventual? He'd always felt that the two would coalesce into something akin to apocalypse, a cataclysm of 'what-he-couldn't-handle.'

Her voice brought him back to reality, brought him back. "Jesus, you cauterizing it? Just bandage me, I thought I saw something back in the bedroom."

Even as she shook her head in dismay and frustration he realized that she was the softest thing that he had ever touched and yet she seemed to somehow burn as brightly as anything he'd ever seen.

/3/

An old adage about wine and women that he couldn't remember, but it didn't matter.

It didn't matter because he'd had far too much of the former and the latter was tight in his embrace, trailing sloppy kisses over the sinews in his neck.

Her shirt partially off, Pachabel's Canon resounding off of the walls of the rented room, he kissed her and remembered that her last name was Sidle and this was entirely too wrong. Too many reasons why – his student, his age, his heart, his longing and his pain.

A sigh was his desperation and for the first time in history it fell on a woman's ears, his emotions somehow spilling through the icy veneer he'd chilled to perfection over time. "Doctor Grissom," she managed to gasp and sat back in his lap, "what's wrong?"

Nothing, nothing was wrong except... everything. He drank her in then, that sweet sight, Sara Sidle sitting in his lap, eyes wide as a doe's; lips swollen, skin flushed.

And in that moment he felt every single one of the years between them. He felt his first love and his first job; his B.S., M.S. and PhD. He felt the number forty creeping through his veins and heard the rumors in his head. He remembered the woman he'd nearly married three years previous and how he'd been so sure that he was so completely in love and he thought of the new woman who'd managed to capture him in a few short days.

Such a concrete thing, love... until... and until and until...

A mutable thing that he was sure he didn't want to subject her to. Too right for him, too special, too something. Too much.

"Sara, it's getting late..." a simple brush off without explanation, one that he hoped she'd understand….

"But it's not even –" and then, "Oh. Oh, alright. I... should be going anyhow, early class tomorrow." Twenty-something Sara grabbed her shoes and slipped them on, polished off the cup of coffee that he'd invited her in for and she'd accepted. Too much sugar. A smile on her lips as she attempted to steal one last kiss from the visiting lecturer...

But he turned his head. And still, she smiled and left him with a, "See you tomorrow."

No words spoken that it was wrong because both were sure that it wasn't.

The strains of Mozart floated out of the clock-stereo and he watched her black coat trail behind her like a morbid train.

/4/

"How many years have I been here?" she asked, sounding as if to no one in particular. The locker room resounded with her words, dirt caked over her clothes, under her nails and his too... the image of Nick in their heads.

Grissom reached into his locker to retrieve a comb and smooth back his unruly, wet hair. "Five... six? Five years..." staring into the mirror, he answered himself.

Sara watched him straighten his hair out with interest, elbows on her knees. He was watching her in the mini-mirror and he knew that she knew. But she sat there, caked in deathly dirt, soaking in despair, frown lines apparent, looking just as old as he felt. "Yeah, about five."

He glanced at her quickly and then shoved the comb onto the top shelf of his locker and slammed the door shut.

Sara smiled, one side of her face twitching up–a hint of something–igniting a tiny flame within him. "You know I'm not leaving right?" Voice quiet, the craving simmering in his veins, the atmosphere was (too quiet).

"Excuse me?"

Sara kicked her locker shut and made her way for the door, leaving a trail of ashes, pieces of her charred soul, in her wake. Disintegrating, that's what she was doing, right before his poor, aging, blue eyes. "I said I'm not leaving," she nearly shouted before dropping her voice. "I'm not leaving because I just love you too much."

And the door to the room swung back and forth, taunting him with her exit.

/5/

Meeting again left his heart thudding in his chest so hard that he truly believe he'd wake the next morning in a hospital garb amongst hospital drab. Her smile was still seamless, even though the gap between her front teeth hadn't been corrected. When he'd asked her about it back when, she'd replied, "Adds to character" with a noncommittal shrug, and went on collecting bland, gray fibers.

He thought she'd forgotten what had transpired between them before, but the way her hand lingered over his too long over the exchange of an evidence bag had his mind reeling. God, he needed another hit, another taste, please another touch, just because... because... there was no explaining it.

And _that_ was how he knew that he was in far too deep. No subtle explanation, no scientific explanation and certainly no easy explanation of the tiny flutterbys that scuttled over the insides of his stomach. Lust, love, infatuation? All of the above? Conventional thinking, rational theorizing, scientific method–all out the window with one simple slide of skin on skin.

"How are you liking the Bay," she asked, and his only response, "I love you, this, it, the ocean, the sea, come back to the desert with me, forever, just come," but only in the deepest recesses of the most unscientific portion of his mind.

The polite smile that had graced his lips was even admirable to him, "It's quite a change, and... it's nice to see you again."

She-she in her enigmatic way had smirked, eyes surely sparkling beneath the sunglasses, had said to him, "More than nice," and had returned to her work.

He knew it was more than a professional courtesy when he didn't actually care about the insects encasing the desiccated body, only about the way her hair became mussed in the breeze. Pretending was a surprisingly easy thing; pretending not to glance at her ass as she bent to retrieve something, pretend not to stare at her lips as she spoke to him.

Damned plain temptress with her skewed smiled and slightly oily skin; a woman so far from perfect that he pushed his flight back two days and feigned ignorance at the airline's mixup. Could have paid his way, could have, if she hadn't suggested a hotel near the piers that was relatively cheap.

/6/

"I was never a fan of Gauguin."

"May I inquire as to why?" a raise of his brow, a movement of his small magnifying glass.

The answer was a long time in coming. "No, you can't," Sara cleared her throat. "No you may not," she amended, her voice incredibly steady and sure.

"Why?" he breathed, ten years of emotion seeping suddenly back into his voice.

There was no speech for some time; eventually he gave up on an answer and returned to the task at hand. An hour or two later, she spoke up, leaving the room, "Mondrian, stoicism... that's what I like."

Gone, she was gone.

/7/

"Vegas," even the word carried sin accompanied with the indelible feel of stickiness.

Her breathing on the other end had caused him to stir a bit, readjust himself both below the belt and in his seat. He was in shape now; he had a few more social skills beneath his bonnet and was ready for what she had to dish out. "Isn't it... I mean... dry in the winter, just gross in the summer?"

Far be it for him to lie to someone so honest, "Yes, but it's the second best lab in the country, Sara," he reevaluated his statement and added, "and we could use you to keep our reputation stable." Meant as a joke, she took it purely as a political mechanism.

"Oh."

"Sara, come here and I'll keep you on."

"Keep me?" she whispered, and he cracked a little and wondered why he'd really been going to the gym all of those years; it didn't particularly matter. A little nicotine in the way she enunciated 'me,' and he was hooked again. There was no picture; it was in his wallet and his wallet was in the locker room... and that was too far. He existed with her voice.

"Pathetic," he thought, "A woman." But just as the thought had come, it had vanished. He heard her laugh and something shuffle on the other end. Really, she was just one state over, she could get there tonig—

"Come here tonight and then we'll decide."

"Grissom, I don't –"

"Sara, please. I need you, now." God, he needed a fix.

The first flight out was at four-fifteen A.M.

She booked first class and he gave up smoking.

/8/

"Cigarette?" he offered, taking a slow drag off of the offending object. "I'm placating my higher demons."

She tossed her bag down beside her and sat on the surprisingly cold steps. "What about the lower ones?" she asked casually, crossing her arms and leaning down to rest them on her knees.

Grissom shrugged and watched the smoke as it floated up and dissipated, another sin to add to the landscape. "I have liquid reinforcement for that."

"Really?"

A nod and then, "What's your pleasure, wine or cheap gin?"

Sara smiled lazily at him and rocked her body back and forth. "Wine." One hand trailed over to tickle over the skin of a forearm as he lowered the cigarette.

His smile was slow, but sweet, and he looked at the end of the cigarette, the ember attempting to burn itself out. He took a long drag before it got the chance, "Give me women, wine and snuff; Until I cry out 'hold, enough!'" The smoke escaped from his lips slowly, and she watched it go. "Keats's holy Trinity."

Sara tilted her head on her arms to complete a successful gaze of the man she's pondered over for so long. After a long period of silence, a palpable thing filled with distant police sirens, the shouts of children playing and their own breath, she uttered, "You can't keep doing this to yourself or you'll explode."

"Doing what?"

"I've never met a man so intent on getting inside his own head."

Withered eyes, not quite old but not quite young, gazed in her direction. "Excuse me?"

Sara just smiled serenely up at him from the crook of an elbow, looking just as young as when he'd first met her. "Invite me in for coffee, we'll talk." She stood with a measure of lethargy, stretching her lengthy bones, flexing her muscles.

"And put out that cigarette, they're not good for you."


End file.
